Ph.D. student identifies 10 dimensions of burrito perfection

The quest to find the perfect burrito started earlier this year as a joke between friends. Now, this UCSD neuroscience Ph.D. student has tried hundreds of burritos in San Diego County, and hopes more people will provide ratings for his growing dataset.

The quest to find the perfect burrito started earlier this year as a joke between friends. Now, this UCSD neuroscience Ph.D. student has tried hundreds of burritos in San Diego County, and hopes more people will provide ratings for his growing dataset.

In a post on Github, Cole presented a data analysis of several hundred San Diego burritos earlier this year. It used statistical methods to prove much of what our stomachs naturally understand — a good burrito comes from balance and synergy among the ingredients.

“Though these ‘majestic cylinders’ are consumed at a rate faster than one per second across San Diego county,” Cole estimated, “they have been dramatically understudied.”

Cole was inspired by a similar effort from FiveThirtyEight, which used Yelp to find the top 64 burrito restaurants in the country and then held a March Madness-esque competition among them (San Diego finished with four of the top 20).

Using a Google form, he and his friends tried and rated 231 burritos, as of early this month.

His method is to use 10 dimensions to calculate the final score. They include:

These measures are rated from 0 to 5. In addition to the 10 baseline criteria, Cole and his like-minded, burrito-rating friends take into account how hungry they were before setting out to eat a burrito, and whether the burrito made them likely to recommend it to a friend.

More than a few times, strangers have offered to pitch in with ratings when they see him gathering data.

“Nobody has ever given me weird looks or anything like that,” he said. “Sometimes people overhearing me and my friends get very interested.”

Cole’s idea for data gathering and analysis came from his volleyball team. After games, they’d go and eat burritos and discuss if burrito X was better than burrito Y.

Cole found that the discussions lacked nuance and specificity, so he concocted the dimensions as a way to give everyone tools to debate the quality of the burritos.

The measurements were developed to apply to as many burritos as possible, so a carne asada burrito can go head-to-head against a barbacoa.

Alejandro Tomayo

Burritos wait for a server in Huapango's in Hillcrest.

Burritos wait for a server in Huapango's in Hillcrest. (Alejandro Tomayo)

And among his 10 dimensions, no single metric is elevated above the others in identifying burrito nirvana.

Cole also attempted to draw correlations regarding how certain ratings affected others, but determined there were no meaningful connections.

For instance, a more expensive burrito does not equate a tastier burrito.

Cole admits his sample is imperfect: Most locations are between Oceanside and La Jolla, which skews the data.

Despite eating burritos at a rate of nine a month since January, Cole said he hasn’t become sick of them.

“If I get tired of a California burrito, I’ll switch to an al Pastor,” he said.

To Cole, spending time to think about what he is eating is a more mindful, transformative experience than simply stuffing his face.

Experiments like Cole’s force participants to rethink their tastes, and potentially gain more insights into themselves, or stomachs.

“Now I appreciate much better the burritos I eat, and I can say why I like or don’t like a burrito,” said Ricardo Serrano, a UCSD mechanical engineering PhD student and 12-time burrito rater. “I realize that it’s the tortilla which is failing, or the meat is the highlight.”

Cole said that he thinks his tastes have remained consistent, but his neuroscience studies have taught him that it may not be the case.

Eating more than 25 feet of burritos hasn’t made Cole balloon, but he did say he has “gained a little weight since starting this semi-serious burrito rating project.”

Burrito aficionados are invited to participate in this study as well, Cole said, as long as they provide quality data.

Analysis results

Using the coding language python, Cole ranked each taco shop based on each measure. He only ranked each shop that had at least five burritos tested. The full results are here. The top three overall: